I’ve always cleaned my new and used kegs the following way which used a minimal amount of CO2 to push a little bit of fluid through the diptube, beer line, and and tap;
-Hot soak w. PBW (followed by a quick flush through the lines and tap)
-Rinse out the keg with clean water (another quick flush of this water through the lines)
-Sanitizer in the keg (another flush)
I’ve seen some of the cleaning kits online that include a hand pump spray bottle. Does anyone use these? I’m wondering if it’s more trouble than it’s worth since I’m really only using a small amount of gas.
I modified a garden sprayer to a flare fitting and use a male flare union to connect to my draft lines. Then I got a Mark’s Keg Washer and use that for longer circulation of cleaner. It’s not recommended to push alkaline cleaners with CO2 as the carbonic acid will act to neutralize some the alkalinity of the cleaner.
This looks so easy, even I could do it! The original post mentions a “Firestone Liquid Post”…I wonder if I could just use a corny keg post…that way I can use my existing ball lock disconnects.
This is what the brass fitting looks like on a small pump. Connets to faucet line. The pump goes in a bucket with a gallon or 2 of PBW cleaner. Recirc through the lines pouring out the faucet back into the bucket. Rinse with warm water recirc, follow up with sanitizer if you want.
Seems to me you could use a 1/4 barb (or a FIP) x 3/8 Flare nut, short hunk of beer line, + MFL to the disconnect. Might be a little more flexible and would be cheap to do.
The small garden sprayer setup work well. To clean & rinse the dip tube without removing, use a piece of beer line with liquid out fittings on both ends. Connect one end to the post on the sprayer setup and the other to the out post of the keg. This line will also come in handy to transfer beer between kegs.
